People and animals

Traditional livestock keepers: Guardians of domestic animal diversity

Domestic animal diversity is being lost at an alarming rate. Worldwide, local livestock breeds are being crossed or replaced with higher-yielding animals under the motto “exotic is better”. Furthermore, the native habitats of pastoralists and their animals are steadily disappearing, relinquishing their domain to agriculture, protected nature reserves and industrial activities. This trend is further encouraged by existing formal policy, short-term profit opportunities and a decreasing appreciation of the value of local breeds.

The present variety of farm animal species and breeds is the result of centuries of local knowledge-based selection by traditional livestock keepers. Through traditional farming systems a broad diversity of livestock breeds is being preserved and developed to provide meat, dairy products, eggs, fibre, fertilizer, manure and draught power. Consumers in both developing and developed countries benefit from this diversity since it offers them a wide choice of products for a varied and nutritious diet. Finally, livestock diversity represents future capacity to meet unforeseen needs and opportunities.

With the help of pastoral communities, case studies on traditional livestock farming systems using local breeds were compiled in order to understand and establish:

• how communities manage local animal genetic resources;
• local knowledge and good practices;
• how animal genetic resources interact with their environment;
• how communities cope with threats to their local animal genetic resources;
• long-term solutions and sustainability of strategies.

Pastoral communities that live in similar ecosystems in very different regions of the world adopt comparable farming strategies, so the chapters of this publication have been classified according to ecosystems. Each chapter briefly describes the challenges faced by livestock keepers in a specific ecosystem, while the case studies illustrate how communities have dealt with these challenges.

Click here to view the document.